“I will not discuss this further!” Lady Agatha insisted. She was weakening, her voice quavering with emotion and also with whatever mysterious ailment had been plaguing her for the last months. It was slowly robbing her of her strength. Her body was wavering but her will was iron.
“Really, Edmund,” Eloise said sharply. “Must we go through all of this again? If your aunt wishes to continue living in her delusions, let her! But for heaven’s sake, stop yelling! It’s giving me a splitting headache!”
He whirled on his wife, his anger quickly transferring to her. “If you’ve nothing useful to add, why don’t you retire? We’ll have a tray sent up, though I daresay none of the food will interest you as much as the wine!”
“Enough!” Lady Agatha shouted. “This endless sniping at one another will cease… immediately!”
Before Edmund could reply, the butler entered the dining room. He’d disappeared moments earlier when there had been a knock at the door. It was all very mysterious, but then there were many mysteries at Castle Black.
“My lady, forgive me,” he said. “But there is a gentleman at the door who states it is urgent that he sees you.”
“She is unwell,” Edmund protested. “She is not to be bothered with callers who do not have the decency to come during regular hours!”
Beatrice glared at him. He’d had little enough care for Lady Agatha’s health when he’d been berating her to have her missing son declared dead. There was no need for her to intervene. Ill or not, Lady Agatha was still a force to be reckoned with.
“I will decide who I am well enough to see and who I am not,” Lady Agatha snapped. “Does he have news of Graham? Is it the investigator we hired?”
“No, my lady,” the butler said, clearly uncertain of what to say. After shuffling his feet nervously and clearing his throat no less than half a dozen times, he finally continued, “He claims, my lady—that is, he says—He is Lord Blakemore. Graham, my lady. Graham, Lord Blakemore.”
The room went completely silent. A pin drop would have sounded like cannon fire. Beatrice rose from her chair as Lady Agatha slowly sank to the floor.
Beatrice dropped to her knees beside Lady Agatha’s fallen form. She checked to ensure that the woman’s heart still beat and, thankfully, it did, though erratically.
As she dispatched a servant to fetch smelling salts, the cacophony of the room assaulted her senses. It seemed impossible for such a small group of people to make so much noise and, yet, the room filled with voices, mostly Edmund’s. He ranted and raged about imposters and confidence schemes. Eloise continued to drink her wine, watching the tableau unfold with vague disinterest as the footmen gathered at the periphery of the room began to whisper in hushed tones about the scandalous events. Christopher was the only one who remained completely silent, but then he always had little to say, preferring to remain sullen and quiet.
“She will not see him!” Edmund declared, pointing his finger belligerently into Beatrice’s face.
“That is not for you to say,” Beatrice admonished softly. “Lady Agatha is of sound mind and is capable of making her own decisions!”
“Is she?” he demanded. “She’s insisted that her son lost at sea nearly two decades ago is alive because she would ‘feel’ it otherwise. Are those not the ravings of a madwoman?”
Lady Agatha stirred. Her eyes fluttered but did not open. A soft moan escaped her. Beatrice touched her forehead, finding it cold and clammy.
“Where are those smelling salts?” Beatrice asked.
“In her room, Miss… the maid has gone to fetch them,” the butler said as he fanned his fallen mistress.
“I should have had her declared mad years ago,” Edmund sneered.
“Hush!” Beatrice snapped. “Hush this instant. You’ve no right to say such things! Clearly, she is ill right now and that should be your only concern! Instead, you’re viewing it as an opportunity to grasp for more power and prestige for yourself! Have you no shame?”
He grabbed her arm, hauling her up. The servants all looked on in horror as he shook her. “You’re just an interloper here. You’ve no right to be involved in family decisions… a penniless orphan that was allowed to remain out of pity! Or was it something else? You were awfully close to the old Lord Blakemore! Tell me, Beatrice, how did you earn your keep here?”
His ugly accusations rang throughout the room. The whispers stopped altogether and only silence remained. The hideousness of what he implied was beyond the pale for anyone.
“Lord Blakemore was like a father to me. His attentions to me were never anything more than that of a father to his child… how dare you imply otherwise? You are a hateful, vile creature,” she hissed. “You only see such ugliness in others because it exists within you!”
He drew his hand back to strike her. For the first time, Christopher spoke. “Halt!” he shouted. “You will not do this… not today.” Turning to the footmen, he directed, “One of you please carry my mother to the settee in the library where she might recover comfortably. And Hammond, show this gentleman into the drawing room to be dealt with shortly. Once mother awakens and directs us further, we will take action. Until that time, everyone will remain calm and stop shouting like ill-bred urchins!”
Edmund let go of her so abruptly that she stumbled and nearly fell. Had she not managed to catch herself by grasping the edge of the table, she would have. Her arm ached where he’d grabbed her, but she’d not give him the satisfaction of rubbing the abused spot. Instead, she followed the footman who’d carefully picked up Lady Agatha and headed for the library. It was too much. The entire world seemed to have gone mad in the last few moments.
Chapter Two
Standing in the midst of the great hall of Castle Black, there was no memory, no stirring of old feelings or sense of déjà vu. He stood there as a stranger might, slightly awed by the scale of the thing, but the kinship he’d thought to feel was simply absent. The stone walls, great and imposing, seemed to mock him. Who was he to stand there but a worthless sea dog, tossed from one ship to the next since he’d been discovered? His recollection of any time prior to that was simply gone.
Taking another glance around, he wondered what his reception would be. The ornately carved coat of arms, flanked by medieval weapons he had no name for, loomed above him. Would they call him an imposter? Could he even adequately defend his position that he was not? He was not entirely certain he believed it himself.
“Forgive me, sir—er, my lord,” the butler said as he came back into the great hall from what he could only presume was the dining room. “Allow me to show you into the drawing room. Her ladyship is quite overcome and will need to recover from the shock before she can see you.”
He frowned at that. “Is she in poor health?” It was only natural to think that his return, if he was, in fact, the Lost Lord of Castle Black as the news sheets had styled it, would be upsetting or shocking. He did not want it to do irreparable harm, however.
The butler appeared scandalized at the very mention of it, as if asking such a personal question were somehow a violation of etiquette. Perhaps it was. The rules of polite society were not something that had been of paramount importance in his life for almost two decades. Survival, keeping his feet on the deck and the flogger off his back had been his primary goals in life. They’d hardly left time for him to be concerned with such niceties.
“I couldn’t say, my lord,” the butler answered stiffly. “Please, follow me.”
Graham didn’t. He was testing himself as much as the servants who watched him as if he were some ephemeral apparition in their midst. Instead, he stalked past the butler and headed down the hall. Unerringly, he opened the door to the drawing room and stepped inside, leaving a bevy of stunned servants in his wake. None of them were more surprised than he himself was. It could very well have blown up in his face to head out on his own without guidance from the butler. The simple truth was, he’d been testing himself. He’d wanted to know if he could truly find his way o
n his own. It gave him more faith in the claim he was making. Behind him, he could hear the servants’ whispers.
“He knew which door it was!” one of the footmen muttered, his voice awed and his whisper more theatrical than secretive.
“Could it be him, do you think?” an astonished maid replied. Clearly, the speculation amongst the servants would run rampant.
Graham turned, casting a hard gaze into the hallway beyond the door, directly at the servants. They scattered like scared rats. Perhaps he was a lord, after all. He’d known where to go without being told and he’d managed, with nothing more than a look, to send servants into a tizzy. It seemed a good tiding at least, assuming that his presence and claim to the title didn’t send the woman who might be his mother to her deathbed.
Realizing that he was being watched, his every move catalogued by servants no doubt hidden behind every access panel and secret door to the damned room, Graham decided that he should at least attempt to look like a gentleman. Crossing to a small settee, he eyed the delicate looking piece of furniture with trepidation. He’d fall arse over tit if he sat in it, no doubt, and it would be good for naught but kindling after. So, he didn’t sit. Watched or not, he had no wish to make a fool of himself. But being idle was not something he was accustomed to.
So he paced—the length of the room and back. Occasionally, he altered direction simply for a change. All the while, his eyes were scanning every stick of furniture, every painting on the wall or vase on a table, in the hopes that something would seem familiar to him. None of it did. Yet despite that, he didn’t feel out of his element or as if he didn’t belong. From the moment he’d entered the county, he’d had a strange sense of belonging, of connectedness. It was something he’d never felt in any port he’d sailed into over the years. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, but the countryside and the rush of the sea only a short distance away had given him a sense of, sentimental as it was to say, homecoming.
Nonetheless, he was disappointed. He’d come to Castle Black convinced that his arrival there would somehow unlock his frozen memories, that it might close the gaping black chasms in his mind. But it had been a fool’s errand. His earliest memory remained of being aboard a ship, his skin burned from the sun and a thirst upon him that still made his throat ache when he recalled it. Dressed in clothing too fine, even ruined as it was, to be a servant or a farmer, he’d been taken on as cabin boy and, at the very least, given shelter and food, even if he had worked for it like a dog.
A commotion from the corridor halted his pacing and his frustrated reminiscence. Squaring his shoulders, he faced the door and waited for what would surely be a bevy of accusations. He could not have been more wrong.
The woman who burst into the room, her gray hair swept back into a soft chignon, took one look at him and cried out. “Oh, dear heavens… it’s you. It really is you! Graham!”
“I am Lord Graham Blakemore,” he said stiffly. It was still an odd thing to hear roll from his tongue. Graham, yes. He’d carried that moniker all along. When he’d remembered nothing else, he’d remembered that. The surname and the title were recent memories, if they were memories at all and not simply a result of seeing some random news sheet recycling the story of the Lost Lord. It still seemed ludicrous to him and, yet, here he was, seemingly accepted by them as their missing lord.
“Let us not jump to conclusions, Lady Agatha,” a man near his own age admonished none too gently as he stepped in from the hall. “We have yet to ascertain if he speaks the truth!”
“Why would he lie?” Lady Agatha demanded as she stepped even closer to him. The woman swayed alarmingly on her feet, as if she might fall into a faint. Somehow, she pushed on and closed the distance between them until she could reach out, grasp his hand and draw it to her face. Tears flowed freely over her slightly-lined cheeks as she wept silently. Her hold on him was fierce, as if she feared he would vanish again if she were to let go for even a second.
“For the title. The estate. For any number of reasons,” the man continued. His tone was abrupt, dismissive and very disrespectful. Instantly, it set Graham’s teeth on edge. “Let us ask the pertinent questions, at least, before you grant him keys to the castle!”
“What pertinent questions might those be?” Graham demanded. His speech lacked the perfect diction of the gentleman’s. It was rougher, his accent sharpened by the men he’d sailed with, caroused with, drank with. He sounded more like a sailor than a lord, but for the authoritative tone he managed to muster.
The door opened again and Graham’s gaze was instantly glued to the young woman who entered. As she stepped closer, he realized she was not as young as he had first thought. Not thirty, if he had to guess, but not far from it. She would certainly have qualified as a spinster. Based on her dress and the severe styling of her hair, he could only assume that was the case. Despite the severity of her dress, she was pretty. Not beautiful in the soft, classical sense that was in fashion, but there was a kindness to her face that struck him, a gentleness in the curve of her cheek and the soft pout of her bottom lip. A vision entered his mind of a young, dark-haired girl in the middle of a field, twirling and twirling in a bed of wildflowers until it made him dizzy. Abruptly, he turned his gaze away.
“Graham, you remember Beatrice?” the woman beside him asked hopefully.
“I do not, Madame. I have many gaps in my memory. It is only recently that I even recalled my full name and that it was here at Castle Black that I belonged,” he admitted hesitantly. His voice sounded stiff and his words clipped as he uttered them. Would they toss him out now? Deem him an imposter or an adventurer and put him on the road once more?
“Can you tell me what happened to you? We lost sight of you when they had to cut loose the longboat we were in… the ship went down and—” Her voice broke and she began to weep softly.
Uncertain of what to do, Graham looked around the room for some assistance, for a face that did not wear a mask of suspicion and animosity at the very least. He sought out the young woman, Beatrice. She was looking at him with concern and possibly suspicion as well, but concern had taken precedence. She stepped forward and placed her hands on Lady Agatha’s shoulders.
“Come, we’ll sit and he can tell us all that he remembers… and perhaps we can share with him those things that he cannot. You are tired and overwrought, Lady Agatha. Please,” the woman implored.
Lady Agatha nodded and allowed the woman, Beatrice, he reminded himself, to escort her to the settee. They both sank gracefully onto the surface and then turned expectant faces in his direction.
“Edmund,” Lady Agatha stated. “Fetch a comfortable chair for Graham that he might sit close to me and tell me all!”
“Am I his servant now? Look at him!” Edmund snapped, spittle flying from his purpled face. “He’s no gentleman… not by birth or rearing. It’s obvious to anyone who dares to see or speak the truth that this is all a sham!”
Lady Agatha squared her shoulders and said in a stern tone that brooked no argument, “Edmund, you will do as I ask and you will keep your suspicions and your opinions to yourself until we have had an opportunity to hear him out. I am sure that all can be explained in time. Fetch him a chair or leave.”
“He is right to question my presence here, to doubt my story,” Graham said. “I cannot offer proof of my identity. No one can.”
Lady Agatha smiled sadly. “My dear boy, you need not offer proof beyond your visage. For you are the image of my dear Nicholas, a man more kind and forgiving, more loving and merciful than I deserved,” she replied, her voice trembling with emotion. “I knew the instant I laid eyes on you that you were a Blakemore. You could be nothing else.”
“He could be a by-blow… Lord Nicholas was a wonderful man, but still a man with a man’s needs. His fidelity or lack thereof will not change that,” Edmund corrected her, as if tossing out the possibility of her husband’s infidelity were not a grievous offense.
Beatrice glared at him. “Were you not supposed
to fetch a chair and keep quiet?”
Graham tensed as Edmund took a step forward, a murderous glint in his eyes as he glared at Beatrice. Unconsciously, he placed himself between them, his protective instincts alerted by Edmund’s menacing posture and the cruel twist of the man’s sullen mouth.
“Edmund! Do as you are told,” Lady Agatha stated again. “Or go back to London. I’ll not have this house turned into a war zone by you with your ugly suspicions and accusations. If we are as near destitute as you say, then having your wife singlehandedly drain our wine cellars surely has not helped!”
“I cannot condone this, Lady Agatha… we have no proof that this man is who he says he is. I will not sit idly by while you give him free rein to ruin this family’s finances! I will notify the solicitors in London at once, as well as the bankers. He will bleed you dry if you let him!” Edmund insisted.
Lady Agatha sighed wearily, her exhaustion evident in the slumping of her delicate shoulders. “Leave us, Edmund, and do what you must. What care I for matters such as money when my son has returned to me?”
Graham watched as the man turned on his heels and stormed out. Instantly, the room altered, the very air changed in his absence. Everyone, it seemed, breathed a sigh of relief when he departed.
“Is he always like that?” Graham asked.
“Sadly, yes.”
The response had come from Beatrice. Turning back to her, Graham noted that the she was more relaxed and at ease. It softened her features, taking her from simply pretty to something else altogether. It was a dangerous thing when a woman became more appealing every time you looked at her.
“You must tell me where you’ve been all this time,” Lady Agatha said, once again reaching for his hand.
It was a strange thing for him. He was unaccustomed to a tender touch. Still, he tolerated it and steeled himself against the strange stirrings inside him. He wanted to be Lord Blakemore and it had nothing to do with money or titles or living in a fine castle. He wanted to be Lord Blakemore because, at long last, he wanted to belong somewhere, to feel a connection to another human being. Crossing the room, he gathered a sturdy looking chair from near the window and carried it over, seating himself close enough to Lady Agatha that she would not have to crane her neck to see him.
Regency Scandals and Scoundrels Collection Page 73
